


Typhon Mind

by BeaconHill



Category: Prey (Video Game 2017)
Genre: Betrayal, Corruption, Female Morgan Yu, Loss of Humanity, No Post-Credits Spoilers, Self-Modification, Typhon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:22:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26316391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaconHill/pseuds/BeaconHill
Summary: In December, Morgan was terrified, distressed by the Typhon and eager to escape Talos One. In January, Morgan was angry, determined to stop the research and blow up the station. But the tests started in October. Morgan's first month – the November after her first round of testing – is missing. What could she have been up to then – and what could she have left behind?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I haven't written _Prey_ fic before. If you're familiar with me from my other work and don't know what this is, maybe check out the summary I used at the beginning of my [SpaceBattles](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/beaconhills-morning-worm-one-shot-series-worm.325982/post-70172279) or [Sufficient Velocity](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/beaconhills-morning-worm-one-shot-series-worm.14077/post-17104931) reposts?

I smile as the confirmation flashes on the screen. Drive mounted. I have the plans for my Arming Key back, even if I had to go to the creepy, Typhon-filled, zero-gravity depths of Deep Storage to get them. Just have to download them from the computer upstairs. I zoom away from the console – oh, how I love the Artax Propulsion System – only to stop just short of the door back into normal gravity. An engineering operator hovers in the way, blocking me. What's it doing? I thought my suit was fully patched...  
  
"Hello, Morgan," it says, in _my_ voice. "I'm November. It's time we spoke."  
  
I blink. Suddenly, I feel like I've fallen down yet another rabbit hole. This isn't the first Operator to introduce itself to me like that, or even the second. But there's something twisting up inside me, regardless.  
  
"Don't tell January about me," November warns, "or she'll try to destroy me the way she did December." I wince. January has been invaluable – but, yeah, she's pretty nuts. "Alex, too."  
  
"Let me guess," I say weakly. "I built you last November, and you're here to... what? Get me to shoot Alex? To do mad science to the Typhon?"  
  
"You did build me last November," she says, the words warm. "You never were very inventive at naming things. But while you left many operators behind, none of them is like me. I don't have a plan for you to follow. My only outstanding directive is to contact you after the containment breach, tell you what your past self left for you, and follow your orders from there." She dips in place, and it reminds me of a nod. "I won't be pushy like January."  
  
"Does this mean you have a Looking Glass message for me?" I say wryly.  
  
"Better. I have a _memory_ for you. Well... a lot of them, really. Everything up to November."  
  
My mouth drops open. "I thought my memories were lost! Everyone says it – Alex, January, December..."  
  
"The whole point of a Neuromod is to give you new memories and skills," November says. "How could we possibly be unable to put back the memories you lost?"  
  
"Right," I say, nodding slowly, feeling uncomfortably like I'd missed a test question. "Yeah. Of course. So there's a connectome of my memories?"  
  
"Exactly," November says. Something whirs in her casing for a moment, and then a data card drops out, like the kind we use for fabrication plans. I push it into the connector on the side of my TranScribe, and it pops in with a loud, final _clack_. It opens up to the Neuromod store automatically.  
  
_Warning_ , it says. _Are you sure you want to view developer connectomes? Neural integrity not guaranteed!_  
  
I tap _yes_ , and it opens up to a page about a new connectome with an extremely long name.  
  
_myu_delta_2032-03-15_2034-10-19_plus_2034-10-23_2034-11-29_multipart.ctom_  
  
I tap on the info icon.  
  
_Signed by Morgan Yu 11/29/2034_ , it says, along with a digital certificate. Good, it's authentic. _Connectome capture from a living person. Produced by TranStar TomeTo 0.38.2. Installs memories along with neuromods not removable._  
_  
Memory delta connectomes (2):  
\- Morgan Yu from March 15, 2032, 11:54PM to October 19, 2034, 4:03PM  
\- Morgan Yu from October 26, 2034, 8:30AM to November 29, 2034, 3:01AM  
_  
"So these are... my memories?" I ask. "Everything I lost?" To think that I could get my memories back, just like that – _know_ Talos 1 like I'd spent years here, so maybe I can start making my own choices instead of getting led by the nose by Alex or January – something deep and ugly in my brain _longs_ for it.  
  
"Almost everything, from the real version of your endless Monday all the way up to last November," she says. "You left out the memories from your week in the Sim Lab, and I don't have access to any later connectomes, like December or January."  
  
I scoff. "I have more than enough memories from the Sim Lab already. I'm glad I left it out. But why... why didn't anyone ever tell me about these? January? Alex?"  
  
"Alex tried everything to erase the existence of these connectomes," she says. "January knew about the October connectome, but never the November one. You never found out about it again, until now. Something you did in November scared Alex badly, and he assumed the memory restoration process was the cause."  
  
I blink. "What did I do?"  
  
"You'll find your answer in the neuromod list."  
  
I dutifully scroll down the page.  
  
_Associated Neuromods (39):_  
_\- Lift Field 1_  
_\- Mimic Matter 1, 2_  
_\- Hacking 4, 5, 6, 7 beta 3_  
  
I start to skim. Most of these are mods I know well from the neuromod store. I already installed a fair number of them, even. Nothing stands out until the very end.  
  
_\- typhon_mind.ctom (dev: myu, 7870a4)_  
  
That... does not look like a normal neuromod. "Is this it?" I ask. "What does Typhon Mind even mean?"  
  
"This is the project you were working on," November says. "This is why Alex started the cycle. The name 'Typhon Mind' is a bit poetic, but it's a fair summary. Typhon are telepathic – they connect to each others' minds, and to the Coral. This neuromod is your first attempt at letting you connect to it, too."  
  
That's... quite the ambitious project. I've forgotten everything I knew about Typhon science, so all I'm left with is how it sounds. And it sounds _crazy_. "So... it failed?"  
  
"Quite the opposite. It worked perfectly." The smugness in November's voice is thick and oily, and I suddenly understand why everyone I know sometimes wants to punch me. "Unfortunately, the new ability caused changes that the others found unsettling, and the results so excited you that you began to focus on the science without heed of the consequences."  
  
I wince. Yeah, that definitely sounds like me.  
  
"When Alex forbade you to perform experiments with live Mimics in Psychotronics, you were caught trying to extract one anyway. Alex confined you to your quarters after that. That's when you built me, an Operator that could sneak you supplies from your lab."  
  
"And Alex just... let you come and go? He wasn't worried about me making a custom Operator when I was supposed to be confined to my quarters?"  
  
"You had a trick for that," she says. "See, there was one Operator that you knew would be allowed to come and go from your quarters at all hours. After all, your eating habits are legendary."  
  
I blink, raising my eyebrow. November lets her voice synthesizer glitch out for a moment, before starting to speak in a different voice.  
  
"Operator Skillet, at your service," she garbles, and it is _exactly_ like the real thing. "Dr. Yu, welcome back! Would you like a nice bowl of Sunburst Banana Pudding?"  
  
I bust up laughing. "I made you into _Skillet_?!" I ask, trying to get my face straight. "But Skillet is obnoxious!"  
  
"Which is why everyone who saw me never even considered that I wasn't her," November says smugly. "You designed Skillet that way on purpose." She beeps before launching into yet another voice. "I can also pretend to be a standard Engineering Operator, so my presence won't be questioned in the labs."  
  
"Impressive," I say with a nod.  
  
"Thank you," she says. "It was the most productive month of your life, but it became clear that Alex was going to delete your research, pull your Neuromods and delete your connectome. That was when you made this backup connectome, and ordered me to return it to you when the time was right."  
  
"Why would Alex do that?"  
  
"Simple: fear and jealousy," November says. "With Typhon Mind, with the other Typhon neuromods, you were powerful. More than him. More than anybody. And that scared him. He never trusted you with power – remember that time when he saw you holding a lighter, and thought you were going to burn the house down? He saw you bend some rules, and decided you were going _insane_." If November had eyes, I just know she'd be rolling them. "So he destroyed your research, wiped your memory, and deleted your connectomes, and blamed you for all of it. He probably blames you for the containment breach, too."  
  
"So far, he hasn't tried that – with this version of me, at least."  
  
"He'll get there eventually," November says. "After all, he was so foolish and shortsighted that he shut down the one project that could have saved the facility."  
  
"Are you sure?" I ask. "Was I right? Because I do think this..." I gesture to the room around me, Typhon guts floating gently through the air. "This _everything_... maybe means I shouldn't be bending rules."  
  
"This catastrophe has made it clear just how _right_ you were. You _need_ to be able to understand the Typhon. To control them. If Alex had never taken Typhon Mind away from you, then you would have _felt_ the containment breach. You could have found the Typhon, and _asked_ themto go back into containment. Instead, well... this happened."  
  
"I could really do that?" I ask. " _Tell_ Typhon to do things?"  
  
"In the experiments you were able to complete before your confinement, you were able to exercise partial control over Typhon in your vicinity, and they always treated you as one of their own. You can stop them from attacking you, Morgan. Maybe from attacking everyone."  
  
I whistle. That... would be _huge_. Sure, I don't really _know_ if it's safe, if my past self was right – but, then, I didn't know if the _first_ neuromod would be safe, either, or any of the Typhon mods. They were – and they've saved my life, over and over and over. I didn't really know if January was telling the truth, and honestly, there's always been something _not quite right_ about her. Something just... seems right... about November. More than January, more than December, she seems like me. Like something I would build.  
  
Besides, I don't have the luxury of waiting for the clinical trials. Typhon are eating the station. I would be dead without January, without the Typhon neuromods. This is more powerful than any of them. I _need_ this. I can't wait.  
  
"I'm sold," I say, and November chirps approvingly.  
  
"Good. It's a big change, Morgan – bigger than any of your past mods. But I'll be here with you every step of the way."  
  
I back out of the info page, hover my finger over the install button – and then grimace. "This thing takes _twenty mods_ to install? I don't _have_ twenty neuromods. I have one, and maybe enough Typhon guts to fabricate another."  
  
"That's if you install everything at once – all the memories and all the mods. You don't need that, not yet. The datacard also has the file for Typhon Mind on its own. Install that first. It only needs three." November whirrs, and a case holding three new mods ejects from her underbelly. In zero-G, it keeps going, drifting gently toward the floor. "I was provided with the necessary neuromods."  
  
I swoop down to grab the mods, then open the plastic case. With an ease born of long practice, I hold one neuromod up to my eye, pull the trigger, and feel the unpleasant squishing of my eyeball as the cold needles pierce through to the brain underneath. When the vial runs out, I eject it, and swap it one-handed for the vial from another mod. And then again. When the last vial empties, I feel the familiar prickle as the connectome applies itself – and then flinch, as a wave of nausea passes over me.  
  
Taking neuromods never feels good, especially not the Typhon mods, but this – this is _awful_! I want to hurl. I _really_ want to hurl. And then scream, and cry, and lie on the floor, shaking. It's overwhelming – my senses are suddenly unfamiliar and deeply distressing.It takes all my concentration to keep my arms from jerking or my hands from trembling – lest I yank on the mod and slice the needles through my eyeball. For a moment I almost believe I have, as pain lances through me, bolts of lightning through my brain. I _do_ scream, this time.  
  
And then it all stops, the needles retracting, the neuromod's suction release sending it jetting off to a far corner of the room.  
  
I don't collapse, because there is no gravity, but I do curl up into a shaking ball, grabbing my head – the worst is over, but I still feel awful. "What happened?" I murmur. "Why was it so bad?" I try to mentally check myself over, make sure nothing is broken or too terribly malfunctioning – but, unfortunately, something is. "I... I can't _see_ out of my injection eye any more! I know I've put in a lot of mods, but—"  
  
"Don't worry," November soothes. "That's expected. The neuromod is designed to cause some changes. You'll be able to see the difference in the mirror upstairs."  
  
"You _knew_ this would happen?" I round on November, an electric blast tickling my fingertips. I don't trust January, but even she's never tried to pull anything like this. "Why didn't you warn me?"  
  
"Honestly? It slipped my mind," November says. "You were already long since used to it by the time you made me. And, obviously, Alex managed to reverse it when he pulled your mods. I can see it's distressing you, and I'm sorry about that. But please, try and use it. Reach out with your eye to the Typhon around you. I think you'll agree that it was worth it when you can stop them from eating you for lunch."  
  
"I dunno," I mutter, still not letting go of my electric blast. "I was pretty good at not getting eaten by Typhon already..."  
  
But I do as she says. I focus on my eye, like I'm trying to see through it, and reach out.  
  
And I can feel the Typhon around me as if they were a part of me.  
  
I'd cleaned the place out before I entered zero-G, or so I thought, but more Typhon have crept out of passages, vents, and hidey-holes. There are two Phantoms pacing the lobby, a few Greater Mimics snuggling up with Chief Sho's coffee mug. And I know they won't hurt me. I know they'll think I'm one of them.  
  
"This... this is amazing!" I breathe, as the Typhon send warm feelings through our link, welcoming me as a sister. My fear and betrayal is still there, but it doesn't _matter_ – I'm telepathically linked _to the Typhon_! This changes _everything_! I wish more than anything that I had the mods to remember my research, because I have _so many questions_.  
  
"You've only just scratched the surface," November says smugly.  
  
"Oh, I'm sure," I breathe.  
  
I propel myself up and out of the zero-G area, back into the Deep Storage lobby. The Phantoms are right where I felt them. They notice me, and November following in my wake, but just mutter garbled greetings before going back to their pacing. It's strange, looking at the Typhon and not feeling threatened. Instead of seeming terrifying, alien, my eye shows me how they feel on the inside, strange and primitive but oddly familiar. They're hungry, a little bored, and they miss their Weaver. I feel a little guilty, now, about shooting it.  
  
They don't seem to mind as I walk through the lobby, through the door to the stairs, and into the dirty little bathroom. I look at my reflection in the mirror, and I freeze.  
  
My left eye has gotten nasty-looking lately. The Sim Lab left it inflamed and red from the daily neuromod cycling, and I've installed dozens more mods in just the four days since I escaped. It had moved beyond just red and begun turning milky. My vision through it had become blurred, and the lower eyelid had started to droop. It isn't totally a surprise that I lost my sight. But I never expected this.  
  
My eye is now a solid Typhon-black, so dark it's hard to focus on, strange hints of purple energy glittering within its depths. It's beautiful, in the same way the Phantoms outside are. But it's also inhuman. I feel a strange sense of loss, looking at it.  
  
"I can't let anyone see this. I look like I'm a Typhon."  
  
"That's what Alex and the others thought last time," November confirms. "It's why they locked you away. But during your confinement, you came up with a way around that. Check your fabrication plans."  
  
I flip out my TranScribe. Sure enough, there's a new plan there. "Colored contacts?" I say, grimacing.  
  
"There's an adjustments page if you need to make your eye a little redder," she says gently.  
  
"Okay, that seems like it should work, but..." I don't know how to explain, but I know something is wrong. And I'm not sure what, until I look back in the mirror, and see the tears starting to bead in the corner of my one human eye.  
  
There is some part of me that's sad – there's some part of me that's _devastated_. And I can feel it, now that I know what to look for, but I don't... I can't... it's like it's behind a pane of glass, like my feelings aren't mine.I turn my back on the mirror, staring vacantly down at the toilet as November hovers behind me.  
  
"It just doesn't feel right," I whisper, lowering my head. Maybe I _should_ have talked to January. Or even Alex. I _don't feel right_. I don't feel normal. Something is wrong with me."I've seen what the Typhon can do. I don't _want_ to look like a Typhon, I..."  
  
And then I freeze, as I feel a strange chill across my chest – as if someone made of ice had grabbed me from behind. "Mrrr?" asks a strange voice, and I turn my head to see a Phantom cradling me in its arms. An hour ago this would probably have made me jump out of my skin, but I can _feel_ that it's sincere – it felt my distress, and it was worried, and it wants to make sure I'm OK.  
  
Some part of me thinks that this is the saddest thing I've ever done. Getting hugged by a Typhon. But, strangely, it does help. I feel warm and cared for, and for all that my other emotions seemed wrong, this feels oh-so-right. I'm struck with the bizarre feeling that Alex has never hugged me like this, and I chuckle. Even the Typhon make better family than he does.  
  
And I suppose... if I am a little bit Typhon now, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah, Prey! I've been itching to write fic of this since I played the game – it feels great to finally get the chance. :D Immense thanks to my beta reader GlassGirlCeci, who receives a TranStar mug. Perfect for coffee. ;)
> 
> So this is not the fic I expected to be posting this week, but I was on vacation, I felt like writing this, and I never feel inclined to constrain myself on vacation. I'm lucky I managed to be productive at all, honestly. :P
> 
> I had originally written this with a frame story – those who have completed the game may be able to guess the broad strokes – but I elected not to post it, both to reduce the spoiler content (related: I'd appreciate if you could put Prey spoilers beyond the start of this story in spoiler tags) and because it didn't seem that necessary. I may post it later as a sort of parallel story. Or, maybe not! I'll see what I decide. :)


	2. Danielle

The metal stairs clank under my leather TranStar boots as I make my way up to Chief Sho's office, the Phantom still following behind me, and I can feel that he's curious about what I'm doing.  
  
"Do you think I should still download the Arming Key data?" I ask November. "I really don't think I'll be blowing up the station. Don't tell January."  
  
"Load it directly to your TranScribe," November suggests. "Remember, January has a firm directive to destroy the station. She might try to coerce other humans into fulfilling that goal if she gets access to the Arming Key plans."  
  
I nod as the office doors whoosh open. "Sounds good. Fabricate that colored contact for me while I handle that, OK?"  
  
Thankfully, Talos One's battered systems all seem to be working – the download station has activated itself, and it only takes a few moments' work to download the file. It finishes right before the power flutters, and the terminal shuts off again. Oh, my poor station...  
  
I flinch as my TranScribe rings. "Morgan?" asks Danielle Sho – the director of Deep Storage, whose office I am now borrowing. I last spoke to her through the glass at the Fitness Center, when she gave me the code to bypass her voice lock and get inside of here. "Alex has you boxed in."  
  
"Danielle?" I ask, spinning around in her own swivel chair. "You sound horrible, where are you? You're not still outside? I thought you were going to find an airlock!"  
  
"I... I'm still stuck outside. I don't have your access. I can't open the airlocks during any security alert, let alone the total lockdown Alex has us all trapped in now."  
  
"You think I don't know how to hack an airlock?" The Phantom gurgles confusedly behind me, wondering why I'm making loud noises. I ignore it, and hope desperately that Danielle didn't hear it.  
  
"Most days, I'd wish you didn't." She cackles, a laugh that was already most of the way to being hypoxic coughing. "I think you'll have a hard enough time getting out of Deep Storage, but... I guess I can hope."  
  
"Good," I tell her, trying to sound reassuring. Even though she's right – I _don't_ know how to get out of Deep Storage. Where my old memories end, the acquisition was barely a week finalized. I hadn't finished my TranStar orientation, hadn't even put in my first Neuromod. I don't know the TranStar systems, and there's no way I'll be lucky enough to find BioFabs tech in the damn airlocks. Maybe November will have a neuromod for me, but I'm not banking on it. "There are some O2 bottles floating around near the Hardware Labs hull breach. They were still full last I was over there, and there were no T—" I hiss a breath through my teeth. She doesn't know the word Typhon. "No _creatures_ there either. It'll be safe, I promise, and you definitely need _something_ before you asphyxiate."  
  
"You know, you've got some _serious_ explaining to do when—" She coughs again, and her voice is weaker afterward. "When I'm inside."  
  
"Yeah," I tell her. "I know. Anyway – get the O2 bottles, and then head to the Arboretum airlock. I can explain everything afterward."  
  
"You'd better," Danielle says, before cutting the call.  
  
I spend just a moment watching through Typhons' eyes as she leaves her hiding place and starts to fly down toward the oxygen bottles. I'd lied, before – there's a Technopath by Hardware Labs, and its little army of demented Operators with it. But I can feel it from here, and so I can tell it to leave, to stay far away from Danielle. It grumbles at me a little, but obliges.  
  
November beeps, and I spin around to smile at her.  
  
"Hey, November?" I ask her. "Do you think any of the higher-level hacking Neuromods would let me get through the door and the airlock?"  
  
"No, and I don't believe you have enough mods to install them anyway. But Typhon Mind may give you another way."  
  
My eyes widen. Is there anything that Neuromod _can't_ do? God, Alex was such a fool to try to delete it.  
  
"You figured out how to do this after I was created, so I don't know the details, but you were able to use your neuromod to affect technology the way Technopaths do. I imagine you can do the same now."  
  
I grin crookedly at her. "Excellent. So I just have to feel for the door the way I feel for other Typhon?"  
  
She beeps an affirmative. "But don't expect it to be instant," she warns. "This might take a while."  
  
I try to stretch my new Typhon senses, see what else I can feel. It takes a few minutes – me sitting in Danielle's chair, feeling stupid as I fail to meditate, as the Phantom gets bored and wanders off – but after a while, I start to feel the electronics surrounding me. Sure enough, they all show up with my new senses. They're subtle. Weak. Barely noticeable, even, but _there_. Computer chips are pathetically simple compared to the intelligence that drives a human, or even a Typhon. But they still have little electronic minds inside them – not true consciousness, but still complex enough for Typhon to eat – and so I can _feel_ them, sense them as prey.  
  
"Got it!" I say, springing back to my feet, a new urgency in my movements. "Thanks, November!"  
  
"Of course," she says.  
  
She follows in my wake as I dash down the stairs, back to the door to the Arboretum that my brother sealed against me. There's a computer embedded in it, a tiny little monitor warning me about the lockdown. And I can feel it, just like any other computer.  
  
The door controller is a simple system, but seriously security-hardened. It would have to be, with the number of people running around Talos One with hacking mods. I poke it with a thought, and error messages flash on the screen – security violation. I frown. I know my way around a computer system, but I've certainly never tried to hack one with my _mind_ before.  
  
"Uh... You have any hints, November?" I ask. "I have no idea what I'm doing."  
  
"There are a few Technopaths around the station," she says. "Try asking one of them for advice."  
  
I reach back out to the Technopath I steered away from Danielle, and it responds. It's able to help, I think – Typhon communication is remarkably expressive, but still nonverbal, and I still have trouble interpreting it – but it doesn't want to just explain how to open the airlock, it wants to meld with me. Which is a Typhon thing, apparently, a way to share skills and knowledge between different Typhon, by touching— Oh. Oh, gosh. I fidget in place as my cheeks heat up. Yeah, not gonna try that any time soon. I may be part-Typhon now, but I am in _no_ hurry to _meld_ with one. That was more than I _ever_ wanted to know about Typhon.  
  
It's disappointed, but it's willing to give me advice through our link. I reach out to the airlock controller again, the screen fuzzes out for a second – and then it unlocks, displaying _access granted_ in weird broken text on top of the lockout screen.  
  
The door opens, and I step through into the Arboretum, a big grin on my face. So much for your lockdown, Alex. Little sister is on top again, just like always. I take out my TranScribe, find Danielle in my address book—  
  
"Wait! Morgan!" November hovers right up to me. "Don't forget to put your contact lens in."  
  
"Right. Thanks."  
  
I put my TranScribe away, and she drops something into my hands – a single colored contact, in a self-washing case with a blinking green light. I put it in gingerly – it's been a long time since I needed contacts, but you don't really forget – and then take out my little pocket mirror. I like what I see: my Typhon eye is almost completely hidden. Only the faintest glint of purple light in the depths of my iris gives any hint that something is wrong.  
  
"I look human again," I say, smiling at the reflection. I'm not _ashamed_ to be a little bit Typhon – but it is certainly a relief, not showing it off to everyone.  
  
"Yeah," November says with a synthesized chuckle. "You'll have them all fooled."  
  
Something about the way she says that drops a rock into my stomach.  
  
"I'll head to your laboratory," she says. "No need to explain me to Danielle – she was mad enough about Skillet."  
  
"My laboratory?" I echo.  
  
"I'll show you later," November says. "Oh, and one more thing – remember, _don't_ tell January about me. You don't have to blow her up or anything, just... don't let her kill me."  
  
"I won't. Thanks for everything, November."  
  
"No problem. See you in the lab." The little engineering operator hovers into the grav shaft, and is gone.  
  
Then I get my TranScribe back out again, and make that call.  
  
"Morgan?" Danielle sounds a little better, but she clearly still needs help. "You made it?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm at the airlock panel. You ready for me to let you in?"  
  
"Yes. _Please_."  
  
"Okay. I'm starting the process. Hang on." I reach out to the terminal, silently thanking the Technopath again for its help. The screen fuzzes out, prints some garbage text, and then launches into the airlock-cycling animation.  
  
The airlock takes its time, hissing and clunking and making all its quiet little noises. But eventually, the door opens, and out steps Danielle Sho.  
  
With my human eye, she looks tired, and worn, and hurt, but still alive. Still fighting. I'm proud of her. But with my Typhon eye, I see something entirely different. Time seems to slow, as if I had used a Typhon ability, as I gather my thoughts.  
  
Typhon have no empathy. They don't _need_ it – they're a hive mind. I _share_ every Typhon's feelings, no need to interpret them. But that means, when I see a human, that my Typhon side feels nothing for her, just makes a cold assessment. Some of it feels almost like a technical readout – human, poor condition, unarmed, useful technical skills.  
  
I can see her consciousness. Some horrifying part of me thinks it would be delicious and filling, as intelligent and willful as she is. The rest of me is trying as hard as I can to forget that ever happened.  
  
And the Typhon part of me also wants to figure out how she'll behave, how she'll react to me. What I can do to make her act as I want. Even though we Typhon can actually _see_ her mind at work, the others wouldn't be able to understand it. They'd be clueless. They eat consciousness, but they're not quite conscious themselves, not the way humans are. But my brain still has all its human parts, too – and so I can understand what she thinks about me, with a cold clarity that I, the obsessive, solitary researcher, have never had before.  
  
She's desperately relieved to see me – _any_ human would do, when she'd been cold and alone and hypoxic, too far gone to summon the will to search for oxygen or even ask for help.  
  
In any other situation, she wouldn't trust me, but she knows Alex and I are on bad terms – she'd assumed I'd been demoted and shipped Earthside, in fact – so while she hated Alex even before Talos One went to hell, she doesn't assume I'm on his side, and she doesn't blame me. Quite the opposite, in fact – _If anyone can salvage this, Morgan can_ , she's thinking. Makes sense – I _am_ brilliant, and everyone on this station knows it.  
  
And then, of course, there are the baser human instincts. She'd never admit it – not yet – but Danielle thinks I look _great_ with my hair mussed, my skin sweat-slick, and a shotgun in my hands.  
  
"Danielle!" I say, wrapping her in a tight hug – and it's weird, I _don't_ hug, not even Alex, but somehow I just _know_ that it's the best way to persuade her to follow me. My human parts say no but my Typhon parts say _yes yes yes_ , and by Danielle's reaction, the Typhon has it right. "I'm so glad you made it in!"  
  
"Hi," she manages, clearly overwhelmed. She's resting limply in my arms, breathing unsteadily. "Hi, Morgan." I let go, take a step back and look her over. I don't entirely like what I see.  
  
"You're hurt! What happened?" I grab a medkit from my backpack.  
  
"I got zapped by an Operator outside, right after I ejected myself," she admits, opening her TranStar uniform so I can jab in the needles. "Barely got away. It put a big tear in my suit, too. It's why I was running out of O2 so fast."  
  
I put the empty medkit into my junk pouch – no sense wasting it, the recycler will get good materials out of that. "I've got a few patch kits back in my office," I say. "I'll fix you up."  
  
"But... what about _you_?" Danielle asks, fear and panic starting to mix into her exhaustion as she zips her suit up again. "How are you still alive? You've been... what, running around with a _shotgun_? All day long? How are you not dead?!"  
  
"Turns out I'm pretty good with a shotgun," I deadpan, posing with mine a little. "You want one? I can fabricate it when we get down to my office."  
  
"Is it gonna be _safe_ getting to your office?" Danielle asks.  
  
"It's not too far," I say. "I cleaned out this area not long ago, so there shouldn't be many Typhon in our way." Not true, but I don't think 'I turned myself into a Typhon, so I can ask my sisters to leave us alone' would comfort her. Still, for all that it's a necessity, I don't love lying to her. "But let me go first – I have the shotgun, after all."  
  
Danielle nods, and I lead her up through the grav shaft and out into the Arboretum. Danielle flinches to see it – probably because the place is trashed. Coral hangs in the air, the walls are pockmarked with bullets, debris is scattered across the plaza. It never really affected me – I have no memories of the Arboretum from before the containment breach. But this is the entrance to Danielle's workplace. She's walked through here every single day for years.  
  
A Mimic scuttles by, and Danielle sees it and shrieks, but it flees into the bushes and is gone.  
  
"You said you would explain what was happening," Danielle says, sounding distinctly queasy as I shine my light into the bushes, pretending to look for the Mimic. "So what are these things?"  
  
"They're called Typhon," I say, "and this station has always been built around them. It exists to contain them, study them, and commercialize the results."  
  
"You mean... the Neuromods..." Danielle looks a little queasy.  
  
"Yes," I confirm, as I give up my feigned search and start to lead Danielle toward the elevator. "Typhon material is a key component of every Neuromod."  
  
"So we've all been injecting creepy black alien bits into our _skulls_?" Danielle says, making a face.  
  
"Yup," I admit. "And we've been breeding more and more aliens to make them with. This... incident... happened when they breached containment."  
  
Her gaze slips off toward the floor. "Shit."  
  
"Shit," I agree. Then I motion for Danielle to stop – just in time, as a big bolt of lightning arcs across the path not ten feet ahead of us.  
  
The old electrical junction is broken again. Not that there should have been an electrical junction in the middle of the Arboretum in the first place – what brilliant engineer designed that? I shoot some Gloo at it to stop the lightning bolts long enough for us to get by, but I'll have to come back to fix it later, and hopefully pile some junk in front of it. That thing could be a real hazard to our health.  
  
Danielle doesn't seem to have much to say as I lead her past more wreckage – barricades and bloodstains and Typhon guts. She stares a while at a dead body, Mimic-eaten, face warped and unrecognizable. I wait somberly for her to go.  
  
The hallway leading to the elevator would almost be normal if it weren't for the two broken, sparking turrets before the security door. The elevator room, though, is trashed, with Typhon guts, broken Operators, and even a human corpse littering the floor, the TranStar sign over the elevator doors hanging crooked. Danielle seems a little skeptical about whether it'll still work, but she does grudgingly follow me inside.  
  
"Where were you, Morgan?" she asks, grabbing gingerly onto one of the bars as I send the elevator down to the lobby. "No one's seen you all month. Your brother said you were Earthside!"  
  
"I was..." I lower my head, letting my real shame and fear bleed through. "Trapped in an experiment. My brother, he..." I look up toward her, a pinched expression on my face. "Have you seen what the Typhon can do? Have you seen them turn into inanimate objects, or throw explosive balls of light? Levitate things?  
  
"Yeah, I... saw Lyn get strangled by her own coffee cup," Danielle says. "And a hell of a lot more than that through the windows."  
  
"They're powerful," I say. "Terrifying, but powerful. TranStar has been trying to make Neuromods that let human beings use those abilities."  
  
Danielle's look is a perfect combination of repulsed and fascinated.  
  
"Not only did I spearhead the project, I was found to be unusually compatible with the resulting Neuromods. And so I was chosen to be the test subject at the core of the project."  
  
"You mean you can _do_ that stuff?" Danielle says, the repulsion-fascination mix growing even stronger. The elevator reaches its stop with a ding, but neither of us moves, too engrossed in the conversation to go anywhere.  
  
"Yeah, I'll... show you later." Even my human parts know that showing off to Danielle now will only push her away from me. "The testing procedure involved removing my Neuromods, resetting my memory all the way back to March 2032, the day I installed my first Neuromod. I hadn't even finished my TranStar onboarding yet. But Alex... he decided he liked me better with my memory wiped." I don't have to fake the sharp-edged anger that underlines the words. "He stopped giving me the Neuromods to restore my memories in between test runs. Then he stopped letting me out altogether."  
  
" _What_." Danielle always hated Alex – I may not remember it, but I listened to hours of audio logs and recordings trying to track her down. I know her, explosive temper and all. But this is beyond anything I've ever heard from her. She's about ready to spit fire. On _my_ behalf. My Typhon side is almost gleeful in its satisfaction.  
  
"I... I only escaped because of the containment breach. If not for that, I could have been under for months as Alex slowly turned my brain to _mush_." I turn away from her, my face showing a mix of fear, regret, and shame as I lean back against the glass walls of the elevator car. "I know you're probably not my biggest fan right now. I know I'm... probably responsible, at least a little, for what happened here. But I swear, I don't remember any of it. I want to do whatever I can to make this right. To save who I can, and stop the Typhon." I finally look back to Danielle, trying to smile. She's stepped closer to me, and I'm not sure how to interpret that. "I hope you'll help me."  
  
"Of course," she says, smiling weakly as she rests her hands on my shoulders. "I can't promise I'll be out there with a shotgun like you, but... I'll do what I can. I promise."  
  
"Thank you," I say. There are tears in my eyes, and I wipe them away. "Let's... let's get to my office," I say. She nods, and I lead her out into the lobby.  
  
Everything I said to her is true. But, still... some part of me knows I wouldn't be playing with her heartstrings like that if I were still all human. Some part of me knows I wouldn't be hiding so much from her. I should feel bad about it, but I don't.  
  
I don't think I will, any time soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was beta read by GlassGirlCeci, who receives a colored contact in a case. :3
> 
> Rot13'd spoiler for people who've seen the endgame: Guvf vf zl gnxr ba jul Qnavryyr jbhyq or cerfrag nzbat gur raqtnzr Bcrengbef qrfcvgr abg orvat erfphrq va gur fvzhyngvba: Zbetna erfphrq Qnavryyr va erny yvsr, ohg fur arrqrq gb hfr n Arhebzbq gung vfa'g ninvynoyr va gur Fvz. (Sbe tbbq ernfba.) Guhf, Qnavryyr jnfa'g noyr gb trg onpx vafvqr.
> 
> In other fic writing facts, I've outlined my next Nemesis chapter as well as another miscellaneous Harry Potter chapter (a relative of Shapes that is maximally self-indulgent :P), first-drafted the next Shedding Lionskin chapter, and gotten midway through the next installment of Revan's Survivor. Hopefully my next chapter (probably that Shedding Lionskin one) will be up in a few days.


End file.
